(re)transmiting keystrokes to 3rd party programs?

A while back, like last year, I remember reading either here or on the
Albeton forum about a method that someone had developed to store and
transmit keystrokes between max and ableton live.

I’ve searched as much as i could, here, maxobjects and on the ableton
forums, but i think its been buried and I cant seem to find it back.

The system someone made [or discussed] was one where you could send
arrow keys to ableton from max, a round-about-way of being able to
select a ‘clip’ without activating it – presuming you move the arrow
keys/focus only from max it would allow you to call up the actively
playing clip from any channel with one keypress [at least, thats what i
would like to do and ableton doesn’t let you!]. I know how capture
keyboard presses in max – but sending them to another program? That’s
beyond me…

Short of the actual patch, is there a manner to transmit keystrokes from
one program [max] to another? [ableton]? I’m on OSX incase that makes a
difference.

My brain seems to be ignorant [and my beard is too short to stroke now
any further]

I need to send arrow keys to ableton, not midi.
midi is not problem! arrow keys and sending macro’s [apple+___] is…

you *can’t* do a ‘select clip’ in ableton unless you use arrow keys, or
the mouse. other things you cant do unless you use macro-keys is toggle
views/functions etc. If can ditch the UI in ableton all together, I can
build a *much* better controller using just knobs and buttons and NO
mouse! [at least, this is the objective, DITCH THE MOUSE! mice are
evil… hehe]
:)

I have a pretty sweet setup right now, but I’m still forced to use the
mouse for certain things, and I cant access a clips’ assignable
parameters unless i first "click" it, no way via MIDI – ridiculous as it
may seem.

So far nearly everything seems possible with Max… so hopefully this is
too.
:D

> Have you tried looking at AppleScript?
>
> Since Panther you can use AScript to trigger mouse-driven events.

Sounds very interesting. Can I trigger AScript via MIDI? or can I use
Max to convert MIDI into something which triggers AScript?

> Don’t-ever-use-the-mouse is, to a large extent, the design aesthetic
> behind iCE Tools. If you’re looking to build your own UI, you might well
> want to look at these. URI below bottom left.

Ice looks interesting, but I’m working from the direction of external
controllers rather than the computer keyboard. The idea is really to
only use the laptop as the brain, and as a nice display to show meters
for the devices that are plopped on top of the keyboard. I’m working
towards a setup where eventually I can do editing, composing and routing
of improvised material without even using a screen.

It’s going to be a two step process. In the short term i am miss-using
Ableton live to achieve this, but in the long term I’m fairly certain I
will be dropping Ableton and just doing everything within my own custom
environment; there are some fundamental routing and architecture issues
in Ableton which are impeding. If its too complicated to send key
presses and arrow/cursor movements to Ableton I may just drop it and
continue development of my own environment instead [since that is the
real goal anyway].

Regarding Ice, maybe I’m just too tired from too much maxing, but I
can’t seem to really get a good idea why this application/extension is
‘the bomb’ – is there a demo of some kind or a video that shows it in
action? And what do I get? Just some new max objects? Or actual
applications?

I’ve clicked through all the screens and as far as I can tell its a
series of objects I can use that are better than existing modules
[improved list, improved key etc.], and some kind of file manager…?
Sorry if this is an obvious question.